From field to table: a year of Aglione della Valdichiana

A bulb of Aglione della Valdichiana takes almost a year to become the thing that reaches your kitchen. That is not a figure of speech: three full seasons pass between the day it goes into the ground and the day it is ready.

Autumn: sowing

It starts when the previous season has only just ended. Every clove put into the soil will become a whole bulb, which is why part of the harvest is never sold but set aside. Next year's seed is this year's crop.

Winter: nothing to see, but it is there

For months the field looks empty. Underneath, the aglione is working. The first green leaves come up when the cold loosens its grip, and they are the first confirmation that the sowing held.

This is the part that does not photograph well, and it explains why aglione costs what it costs: for half the year the work is waiting and checking.

Spring: the shoots arrive

Towards the end of April the plant tries to flower and pushes out its scapes. They are picked, and picked for two reasons at once: they are good to eat, and taking them off keeps the energy in the bulb instead of sending it into the flower.

It is the moment the field gives something ahead of time. It lasts a few weeks.

Summer: the harvest

The bulbs are lifted by hand, one at a time, when the leaves begin to bend over. By hand is not a romantic choice: aglione is large and the skin that wraps it is thin, and a machine would damage a share of the crop.

A full-grown bulb can be more than ten centimetres across and holds only four or five cloves. People seeing it for the first time think of a giant head of garlic; it is in fact a different plant.

After the harvest: slow drying

This is where the flavour is decided, and it is the step almost nobody talks about. Aglione is dried slowly, at low temperature. Forcing it with heat would be quicker and would give a harsher product: the sweetness aglione is sought for is built during these weeks of patient drying.

It is the difference between a bulb that perfumes and a bulb that bites.

And then it begins again

While the bulbs dry, the next sowing is being prepared in the field. The cycle has no beginning and no end: it dovetails into itself, year after year, as it has in this valley for four centuries.

The Aglione della Valdichiana we ship is the result of that full turn. By the time it arrives, almost a year of work is already inside it.